Mad Max Runs

Six weeks from today, if all goes to plan, the place from which I'm typing this will no longer be my home. And because Life, there will not yet be another physical home on that date, and the waiting will begin. Until at which point it is not, home will be transient and vague and unpredictable, but always, always with my beautiful son. That will have to do. Because I need to go.  Now. It wasn't supposed to be like this, nothing was. But as I've learned over many years across many miles, no Master Plan ever manifests itself completely. And if you aren't prepared to craft plans B-ZZ on the fly, you are toast.  And you will be rolled. Despite the endless opportunities to prepare for this moment-to-be, to anticipate and face That Day that I've been looking for (sadly for some time now) it's still currently suffocating me, and choking me, and kicking my ass.  Because endings are hard.  Because the only real way to survive an ending is to skip straight over it and focu...

This isn’t actually what I want. The thought shone like the moon in front of me, taunting me with its brightness after a fraught journey mincing my way down 2/3 of That Grim’s Ditch, guided by nothing more than the torch on my phone and the raging fire in my guts. The thought came, firm and certain, at That Junction.  That Place Where My Wheels Keep Falling Off.  But this time the wheels had gone 27 miles earlier at Wendover from a blown IT band. It was there I’d already known it was game over. For hours I knew.  Maybe even weeks. Because maybe it was over when I fell for the third time in as many months on my already trashed left shoulder, making me tweak my training to avoid swinging the arm too much?  Or it could have been over when the race cut an hour off the closing time of the first checkpoint a month out – that hour which was to be my cushion to avoid typical mid race anxiety. That loss giving me only a month to work in a pace increase from 16 minute miles to...

There’s a scene in my all-time favourite film, The Last Samurai, in which Tom Cruise’s character, Nathan Algren is getting an absolute shellacking with a wooden sword in an impromptu battle. It’s hammering down with rain. He fights to the best of his ability, but time and again he’s no match for his opponent and is thrown to the ground. He isn’t fully rehearsed in reading his enemy and knowing the right way to fight back. He hasn’t yet failed enough to have learned how not to fail. Every time you think he’s not going to get up again, he does. (All but the last time, but that’s not where we are for the purpose of this story!) Where we are, is that a race that’s succeeded in throttling me twice is in my sights for the third time on 2 September. The Ridgeway 86 - Ivinghoe Beacon to the Avebury Stones. Basically you run a hilly trail marathon before you complete the Race to the Stones 100k route. There are certainly much bigger beasts to tame in the ultra world but this is my beast.  T...